Aymery was still in a deep sleep when Marpasse returned to the priest’s house an hour before sunset, and found Grimbald baking cakes on the hearth. Marpasse might have laughed at his housewifeliness had she not been in a very earnest temper about Denise. So she drew a stool up and sat down as though to make sure that Grimbald did not burn the cakes which he had made while she was away. “I have found her,” she said, and Grimbald had only to listen, for Marpasse’s generous impatience had ample inspiration. “Never tell me women are not obstinate, Father, for I swear to you that Denise was born to make misery for herself. A Jew hunting for a farthing in the mud is not more careful than Denise to hunt out something to grieve over. I should like to cut the conscience out of her, and bury it.” Grimbald held up a hand, and rising from the stool, went to the doorway of the inner room, and looked in to see that Aymery was asleep. He closed the door softly, and came back to the hot cakes and Marpasse. “You are a great battle-horse, my child,” he said bluntly. “Denise’s flanks are not for the same spur.” Marpasse took the rebuke with the best of tempers. “Dear Lord, but the pity of it. All this to-do, and blood-spilling, and no marriage bed at the end of it. There is no law of the Church against it, Father, surely? The monks clapped vows on her, and pulled them off again with their own hands.” Grimbald bent forward, and methodically turned the cakes. His strong face shone like burnished copper in the firelight; a gaunt, good face, honest and very shrewd. Marpasse watched him, and the thought flashed on her from somewhere that it would be an excellent thing to have the baking of such a man’s bread. And with a quaint impulsiveness she put her hand up over her mouth, symbolising the smothering of so scandalous a conceit. Having turned all the cakes, Grimbald gave his judgment. “I have no love for the convent women,” he said, “and there—I am out of fashion.” Marpasse saw the worldly side of the picture, and smoothed away a smile. “Then you would make them man and wife, Father if the chance offered?” “Against all the monkish law in the kingdom,” he said stoutly; “we put no vows on her when she had her cell up yonder. And some of the folk here would have been burnt for her if she had asked it. Only that lewd dog of a Gascon——Well, we broke their teeth at Lewes.” Marpasse stared solemnly into the fire as though looking for pictures amid the blaze of the burning wood. “If Denise could only forget a year,” she said. Grimbald nodded wisely. “God wastes nothing,” he answered; “those who never suffer, never learn.” Aymery slept the whole night, and woke soon after dawn with a rush of memories like clouds over a March sky. He found Grimbald sitting by his bed. Grimbald was dozing, but his eyes opened suddenly and looked straight at Aymery like the eyes of an altar saint in the dimness of the room.